Help: MD wants deck to “really pop”

Company logo on top corner of every page

Sharp edges on everything - anything with a rounded border, turn it into a square / rectangle.

As someone mentioned, throw a shadow on figures and add a white border.

Layer shapes behind text boxes.

All good ideas

Send to the India PPT team..

All good comments. Sometimes I add a shape with a gradient going from whatever color to white to fill the background of my slides. Looks professional and my MD loves it.

Banking has the brightest minds of our generation discussing how to make powerpoints look nice

I'll give you the same feedback I used to receive from similarly useless MDs in my banking days:

"pls make better"

You'll just have to use your imagination and pretend it's barely legible, written in red ink, and sent to you at 3:30am.

I know everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear how this turned out. We changed all of the font to something a little more interesting and made the slide titles larger and also a different, even catchier font. 

Comic Sans. Always Comic Sans.

Def formatting is the way to win the business, just try to delete as much text as possible and excite them with your selection of colour palette!!

Serious answer IMO:

Add standout color, size, and boldness to only the really important numbers/bullets of the slides -- the key message(s) in the deck. I recommend looking at Bain's reports. It's an extreme example, but their column charts are often grayscale except for THE KEY THING to look at which will be a bright red. The header above the chart, and the title of the slide will discuss and point to that aspect of the chart, for example.

How you can take decks and make them pop is to ensure they are not too busy and really emphasize the key message. If everything on the slide has colors, nothing will stand out. If half the text is bolded, none of it might as well be.

...if THAT is what is going to give him the edge with client vs. other banks...

Your mom makes my deck pop

Throw in images from the noun project wherever relevant. It is free to use.

Add definitions for any of the big words in the footnotes. Clients will love the extra info

Throw in some colored language. and by colored language, i mean racist diatribes against diversity recruiting

I hate seniors who think that deck prettiness is what will win you the mandate. 

Yes it has to look good - but the key thing is the content. 

I always tell our juniors a few things:

Title: What the page shows

Subtitle: The takeaway message (if you read nothing else, what is the takeway from this slide)

On the slide - keep text to a minimum, tables likewise are very hard to process. Try to make things as visual as possible. Less is more on the text front. 

As many have said before - use bold and colouring to highlight the key messages - readers should identify the key points quickly rather than having to search

A pic of a giant dick would make it pop

I'm a big fan of just googling slide templates. There are a ton of entire decks out there you can rip from. Sometimes my MD will say a certain slide looks boring or "medicinal" and I'll just browse a few templates online until I see one that'll work well for the slide & I rip it then drop the content from the old slide in. 

Sometimes this is quicker than trying to create slide designs from scratch. Everyone else is right on though w/ shape effects, color coding & shadowing. 

Slip him a tab of acid an hour before the pitch 

Banking is such a garbage industry; wasting the youth and intelligence of bright young adults on formatting bullshit slides

an IED at client meeting

I really enjoy reading blog posts that make me think. I'd also want to express my gratitude for allowing me to comment on this website!